Ubuntu-Studio-users Digest, Vol 30, Issue 5

[Karlheinz Noise]

> Hi everybody, I think it will be a good idea to tell to the list what
> equipment we are using with Ubuntustudio, that will help in coming up
> with recommendations for what to get.

Good idea.

As for myself: I use M-Audio equipment almost exclusively. On my mastering box, I have UbuStu Hardy with the M-Audio 2496 interface. Works like a charm, with no driver limitations. Don't know if those drivers are restricted, hopefully not, but if you accept restricted drivers you're in the clear in either case. (I always make sure I have the option to use restricted drivers in UbuStu, so I'm perhaps not the person you want to talk to if you're trying to live up to FSF ideals.)

I also bought a digital Tascam board on the cheap. Tascam (at the time) pretty much used TDIF exclusively, but M-Audio has a board that acts as an interface to it. Now, this board is at my studio, and I don't use UbuStu exclusively for that (I need Reaper and VSTi's) but I've tried it out in UbuStu Hardy and it seems to work fine.

So, in my experience, M-Audio hardware is a pretty damn good choice.

I also have a friend who uses a Presonus firewire interface to his laptop, and he's been using Linux OS's (various distributions) for years. So Presonus seems like another good choice.

I've also heard that Roland's Edirol interfaces are kind of Linux-friendly, but they all seem to me to be cheap plastic toys, so I've never actually had an interest in testing them out. What few things I've got that are Edirol seem to be really horrid as far as professional audio is concerned, but this has nothing to do with Linux.

Also, if you're even a semi-professional musician, stay away from SoundBlaster. It's cheap Chinese crap. Fortunately they had a hand in the SoundFont specs, which is actually much better than the hardware.

Beyond that, I think most lower-level cards are OK for an average Linux user. It's only when you get into the ProTools hardware range that things become difficult. (My brother works for Avid, so I'm trying to convince him otherwise, but give me a little leeway here.)

Oh, also you should use UbuStu 8.04 for the next year or two, until all the bugs are worked out. Skip the 9.x versions altogether. Too many issues. This isn't Windows, you don't need to install the latest and greatest OS to get work done. "If it works, don't fix it" is especially applicable here. Nobody here is a programmer, we're getting work done and not writing code, so make sure you use only stable releases, even if they don't have as many features. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

My two cents.

-Karlheinz
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